


Into the Fire

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Blood and Water [17]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 06:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9479078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Big Country."For years, Ronon has skirted the edges of what John and Evan shared in their past. Now he's dragged into the middle.





	

“Roll down the windows,” John said, “and stick both hands out, so they know we’re not armed. We’re not getting out till the Feds pinch the other guys, though.”  
  
Ronon nodded and put his pistol on the floor, nudged it under the seat with his toe, and rolled down the window, stuck his hands out.  
  
The chopper overhead circled, spotlight oscillating lazily. Black-clad agents who looked a whole like NID agents came spilling out of black vans. They reached the tail car at the same time as they reached John’s car. A tall, slender, redheaded woman tugged open the driver’s side door with one hand, other hand training a gun on John.  
  
“Get out,” she said. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”  
  
Ronon saw the two men from the restaurant stumble out of their car, hands raised high, shouting in that other language as the agents shoved them against the hood of the car and cuffed them. Another agent came for Lorne, who stepped out of the car obediently and turned around, let himself be cuffed. At a glance from John, Ronon did the same.  
  
It was kind of like on television, when the man read Ronon his rights. Each of them was led to separate cars, two agents guarding them, two agents driving. Ronon sat in the middle of the back seat, wrists cuffed behind him, and watched the city fly by. They were being taken far from the water, from Atlantis.  
  
O’Neill or Woolsey or someone would come for them. For Ronon, at any rate. He wasn’t even from Earth. As for John and Lorne, Ronon had the sinking feeling that they might be stuck with the FBI a little longer.  
  
The caravan of black cars arrived at a blocky, nondescript gray building in the heart of the city. One by one they crawled into a nauseatingly claustrophobic maze of underground parking, and then they were led out of the cars, again one at a time. Ronon watched Lorne, then John, then the first stranger, then the second stranger get taken to the elevators. Ronon was the last to be taken, marched into the elevator, surrounded by four armed agents.  
  
He was pretty sure he could take them, but he didn’t want to cause trouble, make it harder for Woolsey to get him free. Ronon knew that people on Earth were terrible at cooperating with each other within a single nation, let alone across nations, and that was why Atlantis and the Stargate program were secret, because otherwise nothing would ever get done.  
  
The agents marched Ronon down a sterile hallway with harsh overhead lighting and cheap shiny floors. As he passed one room, he heard Rodney’s voice, and hope rose in him.

“ - Just how stupid you are?” Rodney was shouting.  
  
“Now, Dr. McKay,” Woolsey began.  
  
Ronon craned his neck to try and see, but one of the agents shoved him in the back, and he nearly stumbled. Ronon growled and bared his teeth. The agent ducked his head a fraction, paling, but said nothing.  
  
“In here,” another agent said, gesturing to an open door.  
  
“It’s a big country, Baby John,” a man said, from the next room, and Ronon paused. That voice was familiar. Why?  
  
“But I knew we’d find you eventually. Imagine my surprise, when you surface with none other than Bluebell Davytyan? Did you recognize him, in that sexy little uniform? Or were you trying to turn over a new leaf, going with the safer, more respectable option? Because that mouthy Canadian scientist is awfully upset about you being arrested, has demanded very stridently that we give you back, and his demands ring with a desperation that goes beyond professional concern.”  
  
The man was both so close to the truth and so far off the mark at the same time, when it came to John’s relationship with Lorne and Rodney.  
  
Ronon craned his neck to peer at the man who was speaking, but then the FBI agent shoved Ronon into the next room, and the door closing cut off sound from outside.  
  
Ronon’s four captors were arrayed between him and the door.  
  
“What’s your name?” the female agent asked.  
  
“I want a lawyer,” Ronon said.  
  
The other three agents snorted, exchanged smirks.  
  
“Your lawyer’s on his way,” the female agent said. “According to witnesses, your name is Ronon Dex, and you’re a civilian contractor with the Air Force.”  
  
“Then why’d you ask me my name?”  
  
“Problem is, no one’s ever heard of you. At least, no one who’s ever managed the civilian contractors to the military.” The female agent cocked her head to one side, eyed him. “They’ve heard of Dr. McKay, but not you. What’s your birthday?”  
  
Ronon shrugged. He knew he’d been assigned one for the purposes of receiving payment from the SGC - it was the date he’d agreed to join John’s gate team - but he had no idea what it actually was. Once Rodney and John had tried to calculate what the Earth equivalent of Ronon’s birthday was, after he’d explained where his Name Day fell during the Satedan seasons, but it hadn’t really panned out, because Sateda didn’t have months so much as a complex interweaving of lunar cycles due to its multiple moons.  
  
“You don’t know your own birthday?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“How old are you?”  
  
Ronon had been nineteen when the Wraith struck Sateda and turned him into a Runner. “About thirty-one.”  
  
“About?” The female agent raised her eyebrows, mocking him. She didn’t believe him.  
  
He shrugged again.  
  
“How long have you known Hovhannes Davytyan?”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“You may know him as Evan Lorne.”  
  
Ronon bared his teeth and said, “I want a lawyer.”  
  
“You can have a lawyer,” the female agent said, cracking her knuckles, “as soon as you’re done answering my questions.” She cracked her knuckles.  
  
Too late, Ronon recognized the insignia on the ring on her left hand. It was a smaller, less ornate version of the insignia on the ring John had given to his brother at their father’s funeral. The woman wasn’t a real FBI agent. And if she was, she belonged to the Sheppard family, or whatever was left of it.  
  
The woman swung.


End file.
